Tuesday, October 2, 2012

When Teachers Do Not Understand Autism

Today I had an experience and I realized that all teachers do not understand Autism and they need to be educated. My son has high functioning autism.
This means he can go to a normal or “mainstream” school and do normal
activities but be he is not like the other children. He is only 3 so he
only attends Mother’s Day Out 2 days a week. Those 2 days are only 5
hours each day. I wanted so badly for him to have an opportunity to grow
socially and be with other children. Last year he did wonderful. His
teacher was my best friend and she understood him. She got his
personality and he trusted her enough to let her into his world. It was
the most wonderful few months for me and my son! She was a blessing but
now I see she was also the exception. There are not many like that.

That brings me to this year. My son’s birthday is early September so
he was actually bumped up a class instead of going to the next class.
So problem number one was that he was jumping ahead of any skills he had
learned. It was a whole new atmosphere. He was with a new group of
kids, a new teacher, a new room and new ways of learning. There were to
many NEW things and he did not not do well. This is very common
for autistic kids and that is one of his unique characteristics.

The second major issue was that we had accomplished potty training at
home and he was doing great! He was wearing underwear at all times at
home. When he started Mother’s Day Out a strange thing happened. He
forgot everything while he was there. The teacher was just not
understanding why he could not do like the other children. She kept
telling me to have pull ups on him but I kept standing strong in the
fact that he was trained and she needed to pay better attention to his
signals. Today she follows me out to the car and says he MUST were pull
ups from now on because she is tired of cleaning up his accidents. I was
silent and just looked at her. Then she said it was because he just
will NOT talk to her. She got in his face and said “see.” As he shut
down and turned his precious face away clearly in a panic mode.

This is a teacher who clearly does not understand my son. Everyone at
that school knows he is on the spectrum and needs to be cared for with a
little extra attention. When she said that it was his fault because he
won’t talk with her I was furious. That is a huge struggle for him. He
is like many other children on the Autism Spectrum and will not make eye
contact or make communication with people he is not very comfortable
with. That is just him. To allow him to soil himself because he does not
trust her enough to communicate was very upsetting.

I got home and thought about it and realized she did not mean it as
bad as I had took it. She is a good woman and a great teacher. She just
does not understand the precious personality of my son. He is brilliant
and can do things far beyond other children but he lacks those social
skills. I am left with a question of how do we educate teachers so that
our kids can be safely included in the public schools?
I want my son to be able to participate in activities with other
children. He does not qualify for special education and that puts him
right in the middle where no one understands him.

As moms and dads we have to be the voice for our children. We have to
find a way to make others understand. I am still learning this myself.
Together we have a much louder voice than alone!